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Cluster Computing for Humans

-OR- How I learned to love be ok with HPC Pack

Tim Ribaric

@elibtronic

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Ups and Downs

I'm not a fan of Windows, Microsoft, or any large commerical platforms

I barely stomach this whole story so no need to point out how ironic this is

Also please don't point out I'm currently using a Mac

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Parallel Computing

Is complicated

Takes a lot of effort to change a serial task in a parallel one

If this is for a one-off project, that is a big ask

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Your Computer Lab(s)

Probably have a bunch of PCs sitting in them

Is closed at least part of the day, presumably your patrons and staff need to sleep here and there

There's a free MS tool that lets you harness those idle resources

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Other Clustering Paradigms?

Probably many, many others...

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Small Example

Normally your computer has 2-4 cores of processing power

38 terminals in Classroom A (our main lab space) x 4 Cores = 152 Available Cores

About a 5 times increase in computing resources

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Head

Node

User

Network

Storage

Node 01

Node 02

Node 03

Node 36

Node 37

Node 38

...

Diagram

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You can use any application on the machine (eg. Rendering frames with Blender)
A script written in Python, Java, etc.
GPUs can be treated as addressable units for all your cryptocurrency needs *ahem*

What can you do?

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EG from Real Life

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Place scripts / data on network accessible storage

EG.

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Connect to Head Node and Configure Task

EG.

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Heavy job on 10 nodes, 6 days to run

EG.

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Heavy Job, 20 nodes

Ran for 2 day, power outage affected

EG.

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EG.

Heavy Job, 20 nodes

Going on 16 days and counting

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Getting Sneaky

Windows now has native support for Linux

Can run those Linux specific scripts in Windows Yo!

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Windows Subsystem for Linux

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Getting Sneaky

Easier to convince an overworked SysAdmin to install:

Head Node Software
Client on workstations

As opposed to investigating another paradigm and configuring a ton of features

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Classroom A

38 x 4 cores = 152

All potential Library terminals

130 x 4 cores = 520

Potential Contribution from ITS Labs* (Kitchen Sink)

350 x 4 cores = 1400

* https://brocku.ca/information-technology/info/computer-labs-and-printing/#computer-labs

Potential at Brock

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Scaling outside of the institution

This paradigm of clustering can be extended to Cloud Based Azure services!

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Thanks for listening

Would you have a use for this?
How do you sell this to normal mortals?